The present study was designed to find out what kinds of affective characters would have been perceived from Mozart’s works. We conducted two experiments in which students majoring in music listened to musical pieces―string quartets and piano sonatas― of Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert, and rated them on adjective scales. The results of multivariate analysis showed that participants perceived ‘less dynamic’, ‘more stable’ and ‘beautiful’ affective characters in the two genres of pieces of Mozart than in those of Beethoven or Schubert. Based on the findings, we discussed the implications of Mozart’s music for adjustability of emotions or improvement of cognitive tasks.

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A tremolo played on the mandolin is performed by repetition of a single note, so a tremolo is said to be a fluctuating continuous sound with an amplitude envelope in the form of a sawtooth wave. Previous studies demonstrated that a feeling of fluctuation is elicited by sounds with a modulation frequency of up to about 20 Hz, i. e., low frequency, so it is thought that the feeling of fluctuation is related to perception for a tremolo. In this study, the relationship between the feeling of fluctuation and tremolo proficiency was investigated in terms of the plucking rate. The results showed that a tremolo is best performed at a lower level of fluctuation strength.

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Rating experiments on the subjective congruence between the rotating movement of a clock wipe and the pitch shift of ascending, descending, ascending and descending, and descending and ascending were examined. When a rotation of transition started from the top or the bottom on a display screen, despite the direction of rotation, the vertical correspondence between movement of image and pitch shift of a sound created the highest congruence. When direction of pitch shift corresponded with that of a first half part of rotation, similarly high congruence was obtained. When the rotation started from the left or right side, the congruence was constant despite pitch shift conditions. Horizontal movement of a rotation did not affect the congruence between moving picture and sound. There were linear relationships between the subjective congruence and evaluation of audio-visual stimuli and preference to them.

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